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I’ve always been the kind of person that hated people. Well, at least since I was about 13, I had a strong dislike for people and being around them. I didn’t like being in big groups, or even having anyone over or going to a friend’s house. I hated it. But now… now I’ve discovered that I don’t hate people. I want to be around people almost all the time. I want to be around the guy I am in serious like with, have him wrapped around me in more than just the physical sense. I want to be around my wonderful friends that write beautiful prose, or the ones that make beautiful films. I want to be around my friends who argue with me about silly things, or have long interesting discussions about what’s going on in the world. I want to be around the people who listen to music and get up to dance and sing. I love being around people who can carry on an intelligent or interesting or thought-provoking conversation. I love being able to walk around a college campus with some of my best friends, dressed well, and belting out A Very Potter Musical, while it snows. I love being able to hug someone or hold someone’s hand, whether they are a casual friend or a close friend or a boyfriend. I just… well…to quote Jenny Mellor;

Time is such a fickle thing we dwell so much on. I mean, we count centuries, decades, years, months, day, hours, minutes, seconds, but we never count moments as much as we should. We note things like when the date is a palindrome or when it is 05:06:07 on the day of 08/09/10, and that this won’t happen again until 3010. The amount of time it will take for that to happen again is ridiculous. None of us will be around to witness it, so why do we track it? Why don’t we count the things in between this small event that repeats only so often? Like that yearly birthday, where we all turn a year older and count a little more time. Or that monthly surprise someone seems to give you. Or that daily glass of water or pill you swallow. Or that hourly checking of the clock while you’re at work. Or the minutes that tick by much too fast when your hands are intertwined with someone else’s. Or the seconds it seems to take for someone to be in your life, and then out.

This obsession with counting time is just another obsessive compulsive need us humans need to dedicate so much of ourselves to. We plan days around appointments that are at five, or dates around when work starts at 7 or ends at 3. We consider whether or not we should have that second glass of wine even though it’s eleven o’clock and we should go to sleep. We ponder if our death will be slow and painful; will it tick by little by little, while hours roll on? Or will it be instantaneous, and how much time will that instant be?

Maybe some day, someone will turn off the phone that counts their days, the iPod that counts their hours. Maybe some day, someone will throw away the calender that counts their months and years, putting every second of every minute of every hour into tiny little white boxes. Maybe someday, we will count our time with the steps per minute that take us to the days at the beaches, to the hours splashing in the ocean, to the minutes watching a summer sunset, to the seconds of kissing, and to the moments it takes for love to begin.